BeefStewpid

Really appreciate the advice/feedback! Thanks y'all. I'll probably hold off on take 3 for a bit and get a few more short cooks under my belt before trying a long one again (we're 4/4 for short cooks but 0/2 for long.) We will achieve great victory eventually and will post some tasty photos when that happens.

@rotuts ZipLoc freezer bags. Just using the water submersion method for sealing. Hands washed well. Meat was not on sale meat, was fresh cuts from Whole Foods.

So I'm attempting beef short ribs for the second time. The first time I abandoned, perhaps a wee bit too hastily, as a result of the temperature dropping to 104 overnight due to a brown-out. I made a thread about it the other day. This time I used a UPS and there was indeed another brown out, and it hummed along nicely as a result, so that's good. However, this time there's a funky smell in the water. I don't recall this happening the first time. I went ahead and sealed it in a second bag last night. This morning when I checked on it, a small amount of bone and flesh was actually above the water, due to some gas in the bag. I don't know if that gas formed over night or was already in there. But I don't know what the safety implications of that are. Soooo I decided to reseal the outer bag. When I opened it up, it smelled unbearably funky. Doing some research the smell is very consistent with lactobacillus particularly between the two bags. I opened up the inner bag and it didn't smell too bad, in fact, I think the smells I was getting were the faint smells already in the air from the outer bag. I changed out the outer bag and resealed it nicely. It has sunk back down to the bottom of the bath and is still chugging along. Two differences from the first attempt that I think don't matter: covered with cling wrap instead of foil, and moved it to a part of the house that happens to be colder. Some details: In the bag, two short ribs. They are touching. about 2 tablespoons of butter, a pinch of salt and a pinch of pepper. 135 F Noticed faint funkiness about 12 hours in. Ignored it. 24 hours in I decided to double bag because of smell. 36 hours in I noticed a small piece of bone/flesh above the water level. Resealed outer bag and noticed intense funkiness between bags

Yeah Nancy, I think that's the right call. Daaaaaaaamn From now on I'm connecting this thing to a UPS. Also, following the links here contains nothing to green-light eating it:

I think I know the answer to this... but... Was cooking short-ribs at 135 since Monday evening. Was targeting 48 hours. I woke up this morning to see that the immersion circulator was off and that the temperature was 107. I could tell by the fact that the microwave clock was not on that there was a brown-out. I turned the thing back on and it dropped to 104 real fast and then climbed back up. I used Newton's Law of Cooling to figure out that it was off for about 3.5 hours, and in the danger zone for about 3 of those hours. My hope is that since it was at 135 for 36 hours before the brown out, that I'm good to go, but I'm pretty sure reality is that I need to change tonight's dinner plans. Please tell me I'm wrong.